Archive

Monthly Archives: July 2012

“As a metaphor for a rough battle or mob scene in any other arena, scrum seems vivid — the first time,” writes New York Times standards editor Philip Corbett. “Maybe the second. Less so the 10th or 20th time we use it that way.”

Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily iPad publication is laying off nearly a third of its staff, reports Peter Kafka. Staffers will be told today that fifty of the news operation’s 170 employees will be fired.

Employees who produce the paper’s editorial page and sports coverage will be heavily hit by the layoffs, and The Daily will run skeletal versions of those sections from now on. But the cuts will affect other parts of The Daily, including its design and production staff.

“While we are proud to name Emily as the Editor of *$#@%!*&%, the name of the section itself must remain secret for a few more weeks,” says managing editor Robert Thomson, “but it will be the world’s pre-eminent print property section and thrive digitally across borders and languages.”

UPDATE II: “This hoax was conducted in retaliation against US Attorney Laura Duffy for her insubordination against the Obama Administration and Government of the United States of America,” says an email. || READ IT AFTER THE JUMP. Read More

Media General — “smaller, more focused” after selling its newspapers (but for the Tampa Tribune) to Warren Buffett — is dismissing 75 employees today. CEO Marshall Morton tells his staff:

When we sold our newspapers last month, we changed from a company with revenues of $616 million in 2011 and approximately 4,000 employees to one that will have revenues this year of about $350 million and about 1,400 employees working at our television stations. The resources that were necessary to support our larger organization are not justifiable in our smaller, more focused company.

After Jonah Lehrer was caught fabricating Bob Dylan quotes in his book “Imagine,” Salon’s David Daley turned to former New York Times reporter Jayson Blair for his thoughts on the scandal. “Journalism is a profession that’s built on this notion of trust,” says the former journalist who plagiarized and fabricated at the Times. (He’s now a $130/hour life coach.) “I think fundamentally because of this trust in each other, our colleagues and our friends, we’re very slow to realize that any of us, under the right pressure, is capable of anything. …Once you’re young and successful, I think, in this profession you’re only as good as your last story — and you want every story to be better.”

What is Lehrer feeling today? Blair is asked.

I think on one hand he probably feels a sense of relief. On the other, a lot of sadness — sadness for losing his ability to be in a profession which by all accounts he valued, and sadness at disappointing the people who gave him a chance, and his friends and colleagues. The other emotion I would guess he’s feeling is the shock. It seems so incongruous to feel all of those things at the same time, but I’m sure he is feeling both sadness and relief.

What would Blair tell Lehrer?

Redemption is possible, and perhaps the best way to find that redemption — and, more importantly, peace — is to learn lessons from your experience and be able to help others through those lessons.

It’s rough. Very few people enter this profession wanting to do harm or damage to it. It’s heartbreaking to do it because you value it; I still feel as if journalism is my first love. The idea of losing the ability to be in the profession is bad, but the truly hard part is knowing you’ve done damage to the trust that people have in the profession.